The Garmentor
Back in August, I blogged about a new project I was working on called The Garmentor. It took a little longer to launch than I had anticipated, but it is finally live for all to read and enjoy.
To quote the site:
The Garmentor is a weekly fashion magazine for guys that features buying guides, trend tracking, and style tips geared specifically towards today’s busy, tech-savvy men who need to get advice and make a purchase, all in one stop.
I’m a fashion buff, always interested in the latest trends and the coolest new designers, and I figured that it was about time someone created a sleek, online fashion manual for men. I love what they do over at Uncrate, but because they cover such a wide range of topics, men’s fashion never receives the attention I think it deserves.
My goal for The Garmentor is simple: to find and share the greatest men’s fashion products in a way that is accessible and fun to consume. I wanted the clothes to be the star of the magazine, so I ultimately went with a very clean design that features a white background, black text, and lots of Helvetica. I’m a perfectionist and, therefore, never quite satisfied with my work, but I think that the design will serve its purpose as The Garmentor grows into the mature publication that I hope it will become.
One of the greatest lessons I learned while creating The Garmentor is the importance of having a specific objective and never losing sight of it along the way. It is very easy to forget your original intentions when you spend weeks working on a project like The Garmentor. Oftentimes, I had to take a break and remind myself exactly what I was trying to achieve. It’s probably a good idea to write down your objective and tape it to the wall so you never lose focus and try to do too much or accomplish more than you realistically can.
Perhaps in the future I will share some of the scrapped designs for The Garmentor, but for now I fear that some will look better than the finished product. I had to throw out a great deal of ideas because they simply didn’t work for a commercial website that was going to need specific ad placements. This brings me to another lesson I learned: know your design restrictions before you start working. This is an obvious one, but it’s easy to get excited and start working on a design before you establish its requirements. I’ve also had to accept that advertisements will uglify a design, no matter how hard I try to counter it. And so it is.
I’d really appreciate it if you guys could pass The Garmentor along to your friends, family, and anyone else that you think might like it. A great deal of time, energy, blood, sweat, and tears (yes, really, tears) went into launching The Garmentor and it’d be really gratifying to reach the large audience that I think is out there for a publication like this one. Thanks, and enjoy. :)
A Wee Project
I have this little piece of cork board that I’ve carried with me throughout college, and today I decided that it needed an upgrade. I had a really cool piece of paper printed with a wood pattern left over from a calendar and thought it would make a great veneer. Here’s how the project went.
Materials
One sheet of cork board:
One sheet of decorative paper:
A bunch of photos that need displaying:
A handful of clear thumbtacks:
Scissors and a pen:
Step 1: Trace the cork board
This step’s easy. Lay the cork board on the back of your paper and trace it with a pen. Step one complete.
Someone should invent…
On August 18th, I twittered:
From now on, instead of announcing “Someone should invent…” I will put forth that “Someone should mass produce and distribute…”
My point was that it’s silly to say that something should be invented because the simple creation of some incredibly useful object does not equate with my owning said object, or said object changing the world for the better. For example, when I say, “Someone should invent windows that absorb sunlight and turn it into usable energy,” what I really mean to say is: “Someone should produce and distribute these windows so that I can use them in my home and make the world a better place to live.”
Defiantly stating that “someone should invent” is even sillier when the invention has already seen the light of day. And, of course, the windows from my example have already been invented.
The phrase, “Someone should invent,” is useless in 2008. Our problem is not lack of invention; it’s lack of funding for production and mass distribution. Brilliant minds have already solved the energy problem. Now it’s our job, and the job of our leaders, to transfer the solutions from paper to reality. McCain’s offshore drilling won’t do that. Obama’s investment in Green technology will.
Just now I was reading an interview with Thomas Friedman about the Green Revolution and what he calls the next great global industry. In it, he quotes Jeff Wacker, a futurist, who said: “The future’s already here, folks. It’s just not widely distributed.”
That’s the point I was trying to make when I twittered on August 18th.
I want a green-energy bubble. I want so many people throwing crazy dollars at every idea, in every garage, that we have 100,000 people trying 100,000 things, five of which might work, and two might be the next green Google. But I don’t want a Manhattan Project of 12 people in Los Alamos. I want it to be like the IT revolution: everyone becoming a programmer. Only in this case, it’s everyone becoming a green innovator. What IT was to the 80s and 90s, ET, energy technology, will be to the early 21st century.
Thomas Friedman, speaking to Foreign Policy
The 2008 VMAs were unprofessional, poorly planned and difficult to watch. The quality of the VMAs has been going downhill at a fast clip. At this rate, in a few years they will be held in a back alley in West Hollywood, hosted by a former member of O-Town, feauring 5 second performances by American Idol rejects.
God help us all.
Stephanie K in TORTURE Part II: Death by Boredom
I have no issue with family entertainment, but Mom… Dad… there’s a reason they put Vegas far from the civilized world in the middle of a desert. IT’S BECAUSE NORMAL PEOPLE DO NOT BEHAVE LIKE THIS.
People leave their lives when they get to Vegas, they transform into tremendous assholes. It’s hard to read that sentence without thinking I’m somehow predisposed to not like these people, but I do… because I’m one of them… as regularly as humanly possible.
Vegas is Sin City. It’s an delectable adventure designed to swallow you whole and then spit you out in a haze of smoke and a a stench of booze. When Vegas is done with you, you’ll be broke, exhausted, and reeking of strippers.
Hell yes.
Via the Rands Vegas System
Rands wrote this more than six years ago, but it still rings true.
In two weeks, my best friend Stephanie is coming to visit me in San Francisco—which, by the way, is incredible so far—and then we are headed to Vegas for the weekend. A lot of people don’t get it, but we love the place. Once we stayed for four nights straight and decided that it was too much fun for one sitting. However, anything less than four nights is, as Rands describes it, a “delectable adventure.”
The Mirage is our destination, Olives is where we’ll stop for lunch, and Tryst and Tao are THEE clubs to make “what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas” come true. Can’t wait!
Sorry, I had to share this. I watch it about once or twice a week and it always makes me laugh. I heart K80Blog. Also check out the video she made to welcome Oprah to YouTube last year. It’s oozing with sarcasm and quite hysterical. If talking head videos aren’t your thing, you might want to pass. Personally, I find this stuff very entertaining.
Tweetrush For all you infoporn lovers, here’s a site that keeps track of various Twitter stats. For example, the most popular hour to tweet is 15:00 UTC (EST, subtract 5:00), the least busy hour is 8:00-9:00 UTC, and the average number of tweets per person per day (TPD) looks to be hovering around four or five. My daily average is four. Dammit, that means I’m average.
